[R] testing non-linear component in mgcv:gam

John Fox jfox at mcmaster.ca
Wed Oct 5 18:12:15 CEST 2005


Dear Denis,

The chi-square test is formed in analogy to what's done for a GLM: The
difference in residual deviance for the nested models is divided by the
estimated scale parameter -- i.e., the estimated error variance for a model
with normal errors. Otherwise, as you point out, the test would be dependent
upon the scale of the response.

John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Denis Chabot
> Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 9:04 AM
> To: John Fox
> Cc: R list
> Subject: Re: [R] testing non-linear component in mgcv:gam
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> Le 05-10-05 à 09:45, John Fox a écrit :
> 
> > Dear Denis,
> >
> > Take a closer look at the anova table: The models provide identical 
> > fits to the data. The differences in degrees of freedom and 
> deviance 
> > between the two models are essentially zero, 5.5554e-10 and 
> 2.353e-11 
> > respectively.
> >
> > I hope this helps,
> >  John
> This is one of my difficulties. In some examples I found on 
> the web, the difference in deviance is compared directly 
> against the chi- squared distribution. But my y variable has 
> a very small range (between 0 and 0.5, most of the time) so 
> the difference in deviance is always very small and if I 
> compared it against the chi-squared distribution as I have 
> seen done in examples, the non-linear component would always 
> be not significant. Yet it is (with one exception), tested 
> with both mgcv:gam and gam:gam. I think the examples I have 
> read were wrong in this regard, the "scale" factor seen in 
> mgcv output seems to intervene. But exactly how is still 
> mysterious to me and I hesitate to judge the size of the 
> deviance difference myself.
> 
> I agree it is near zero in my example. I guess I need to have 
> more experience with these models to better interpret the output...
> 
> Denis
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> >> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Denis Chabot
> >> Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 8:22 AM
> >> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> >> Subject: [R] testing non-linear component in mgcv:gam
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I need further help with my GAMs. Most models I test are very 
> >> obviously non-linear. Yet, to be on the safe side, I report the 
> >> significance of the smooth (default output of mgcv's
> >> summary.gam) and confirm it deviates significantly from linearity.
> >>
> >> I do the latter by fitting a second model where the same 
> predictor is 
> >> entered without the s(), and then use anova.gam to compare 
> the two. I 
> >> thought this was the equivalent of the default output of anova.gam 
> >> using package gam instead of mgcv.
> >>
> >> I wonder if this procedure is correct because one of my models 
> >> appears to be linear. In fact mgcv estimates df to be 
> exactly 1.0 so 
> >> I could have stopped there. However I inadvertently repeated the 
> >> procedure outlined above. I would have thought in this case the 
> >> anova.gam comparing the smooth and the linear fit would 
> for sure have 
> >> been not significant.
> >> To my surprise, P was 6.18e-09!
> >>
> >> Am I doing something wrong when I attempt to confirm the non- 
> >> parametric part a smoother is significant? Here is my example case 
> >> where the relationship does appear to be linear:
> >>
> >> library(mgcv)
> >>
> >>> This is mgcv 1.3-7
> >>>
> >> Temp <- c(-1.38, -1.12, -0.88, -0.62, -0.38, -0.12, 0.12, 
> 0.38, 0.62, 
> >> 0.88, 1.12,
> >>             1.38, 1.62, 1.88, 2.12, 2.38, 2.62, 2.88, 3.12, 3.38, 
> >> 3.62, 3.88,
> >>             4.12, 4.38, 4.62, 4.88, 5.12, 5.38, 5.62, 5.88, 6.12, 
> >> 6.38, 6.62, 6.88,
> >>             7.12, 8.38, 13.62)
> >> N.sets <- c(2, 6, 3, 9, 26, 15, 34, 21, 30, 18, 28, 27, 
> 27, 29, 31, 
> >> 22, 26, 24, 23,
> >>              15, 25, 24, 27, 19, 26, 24, 22, 13, 10, 2, 5, 
> 3, 1, 1, 
> >> 1, 1, 1) wm.sed <- c(0.000000000, 0.016129032, 0.000000000, 
> >> 0.062046512, 0.396459596, 0.189082949,
> >>              0.054757925, 0.142810440, 0.168005168, 0.180804428, 
> >> 0.111439628, 0.128799505,
> >>              0.193707937, 0.105921610, 0.103497845, 0.028591837, 
> >> 0.217894389, 0.020535469,
> >>              0.080389068, 0.105234450, 0.070213450, 0.050771363, 
> >> 0.042074434, 0.102348837,
> >>              0.049748344, 0.019100478, 0.005203125, 0.101711864, 
> >> 0.000000000, 0.000000000,
> >>              0.014808824, 0.000000000, 0.222000000, 0.167000000, 
> >> 0.000000000, 0.000000000,
> >>              0.000000000)
> >>
> >> sed.gam <- gam(wm.sed~s(Temp),weight=N.sets)
> >> summary.gam(sed.gam)
> >>
> >>> Family: gaussian
> >>> Link function: identity
> >>>
> >>> Formula:
> >>> wm.sed ~ s(Temp)
> >>>
> >>> Parametric coefficients:
> >>>             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
> >>> (Intercept)  0.08403    0.01347   6.241 3.73e-07 ***
> >>> ---
> >>> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
> >>>
> >>> Approximate significance of smooth terms:
> >>>         edf Est.rank     F  p-value
> >>> s(Temp)   1        1 13.95 0.000666 ***
> >>> ---
> >>> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
> >>>
> >>> R-sq.(adj) =  0.554   Deviance explained = 28.5%
> >>> GCV score = 0.09904   Scale est. = 0.093686  n = 37
> >>>
> >>
> >> # testing non-linear contribution
> >> sed.lin <- gam(wm.sed~Temp,weight=N.sets)
> >> summary.gam(sed.lin)
> >>
> >>> Family: gaussian
> >>> Link function: identity
> >>>
> >>> Formula:
> >>> wm.sed ~ Temp
> >>>
> >>> Parametric coefficients:
> >>>              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
> >>> (Intercept)  0.162879   0.019847   8.207 1.14e-09 ***
> >>> Temp        -0.023792   0.006369  -3.736 0.000666 ***
> >>> ---
> >>> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> R-sq.(adj) =  0.554   Deviance explained = 28.5%
> >>> GCV score = 0.09904   Scale est. = 0.093686  n = 37
> >>>
> >> anova.gam(sed.lin, sed.gam, test="F")
> >>
> >>> Analysis of Deviance Table
> >>>
> >>> Model 1: wm.sed ~ Temp
> >>> Model 2: wm.sed ~ s(Temp)
> >>>    Resid. Df Resid. Dev         Df  Deviance      F   Pr(>F)
> >>> 1 3.5000e+01      3.279
> >>> 2 3.5000e+01      3.279 5.5554e-10 2.353e-11 0.4521 6.18e-09 ***
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks in advance,
> >>
> >>
> >> Denis Chabot
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
> >
> 
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